Posted
by
timothy
on Monday June 02, 2014 @05:11AM
from the complicated-model dept.

As The Next Web reports, Samsung is finally bringing to market (in Russia, to start) a phone, the Samzung Z, running the Tizen OS. Like Android, Tizen is based on the Linux kernel, but it's intended for HTML5 apps rather than Android apps. It's not Samsung's first Tizen device, though; the second-generation of its Gear smart-watches are running Tizen as well. "Samsung earlier revealed plans for its first Tizen smartphones to be launched during its second quarter of business in 2014, which runs April to July, so it seems like smartphones other than Samsung Z could still be on their way. The Samsung executive said that Tizen devices could account for as much as 15 percent of Samsung’s mobile shipments per year, but Android will still be its main business."

As someone who watched the 'community process' of the maemo/meego get ignored and decisions regarding the base OS/packaging system forces through by corporate/political types I'm glad to see at least one company producing a debian based phone.

Access to the OS for C application development outside a VM, EFL/enlightenment as the native application toolkit and access to a QT port.

HTML5 after that seems like an an necessary afterthought but at least your not running in a VM.

So far, every attempt at producing a smartphone leads the people involved to believe that they willl be DIFFERENT and they will be able to make a phone which doesn't suck without native apps. So fat everyone else has learned the lesson eventually. Android learned it. Apple learned it. Microsoft have learned it. And the Tizen people will need to learn it to have any chance of success.